Play game
Pumpkin and Skulls's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay / Fun / Engagement | #42 | 2.197 | 2.600 |
| Audio / Sound Design | #43 | 2.282 | 2.700 |
| Theme | #49 | 2.028 | 2.400 |
| Overall | #49 | 2.113 | 2.500 |
| Art Style / Visuals | #51 | 1.944 | 2.300 |
Ranked from 10 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
This is a Roguelike game! Walking enemies are uninvited guests!
Game Engine?
Other - specify below
Game Engine / Tools (Other)
Python Pygame
Self-made & used stuff
Assets (e.g. free or purchased assets used in the game)
Have you joined a game jam before?
Yes
Roughly how much time did you spend developing? (in hours)
72
Anything else you'd like to share about your game or development process?
It was fun.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.


Comments
Pretty nice game, I was just a little to bad at it, lol :)
An interesting concept, but a bit challenging haha. I really liked the visual style you adopted. A top-down camera view allows for many shooting games to be both fun and fluid, which is exactly what happened here.
One thing I found a bit odd at first, and something that could improve the overall aesthetic of the game, is adjusting the player’s sprite based on the mouse direction. Since we have a top-down camera view, this would give the feeling that the player is looking around, while also making the shooting direction more harmonious (which is not happening in this version, as we can look in one direction and shoot in the other).
Aesthetically, I’d say the enemies work very well for signaling danger. However, since they don’t have complex animations and are just skulls, I think it would be interesting to keep their original sprite angle, instead of having them constantly rotate to follow the player's direction. This way, the skull silhouette would be more recognizable and striking, as right now, their teeth give the illusion of tails when moving diagonally or horizontally.
The sounds work well, but something more upbeat and energetic would fit better for a game where action is the main focus. This doesn't really affect the gameplay experience, but it would be something to consider in future projects, as sound often plays a big role in overall immersion.
The upgrades in the game are interesting, though I feel they take a bit too long to appear. Also, the addition of just one extra shot didn’t seem like a very enticing upgrade haha. Enemies generally die with two shots, so it would be better if that was the bonus from picking up this upgrade.
This game has a lot of potential, and creating it in Python was quite a challenge (I’m not familiar with this language, so I assume you didn’t use a game engine).
Great job with what you had available—delivering something playable is already a big achievement, and it surely helped you learn a lot. I wish you success as a developer and good luck with the jam!
Damn, it's hard. But fun! However, +1 bullet for one of the upgrades is pretty rough imo. The gameplay loop is fun and simple, but the enemies like to linger a lot. I mean if I suddenly come face to face with an enemy, it usually means I'll lose 2 instances of health since the speed of the enemies is only a tiny bit slower than the player. The game could also take a bit more polishing such as particles and UI.
Overall, quite enjoyable :)
This was fun! The intensity was immediate and the upgrades were impactful. Does it have an end or do you just survive as long as possible?
The upgrade card with the darker blue background is hard to read at first. I can imagine some people may not be able to read it at all.
It felt like I was being given upgrades at random intervals? I'm still not sure if it was based on how many skulls I killed or some other factor I couldn't parse. Some indication of how close we are to the next one would be nice.
The bloodstains build up fast. I imagine it wouldn't become a computing problem very easily but it could make for a lot of visual clutter if you were to scale this game up.
Overall, I enjoyed this! Reminiscent of both Vampire Survivors and Nuclear Throne, both of which I love.
Upgrade cards are given every 15 points. Thank you for playing
A pretty satisfying game I would say. It really fits the theme nicely. Great work!
Thank you)
shoot em up, so good!
Thank you!